The Halloween Graveyard
The other day, while mindlessly driving down a narrow, fall-colored, leaf-filled neighborhood street, I noticed that Halloween decorations were beginning to appear. Pumpkins. Ghosts. Witches. And then the graveyard.
I slowed down to take it all in. The Halloween graveyard.
This particular family had elaborately constructed a very real-looking cemetery complete with a spider-webbed decorated iron fence, an ominous looking entry gate and more tombstones than I cared to count. I smiled a little and shook my head. Innocent and ignorant I’ve come to call them.
TWENTY YEARS AGO WHEN GRIEF WAS SO FRESH
Twenty years ago my response was different. Twenty years ago, my wife and I were trying to figure out how to survive (that’s all we asked for back then) our first Halloween without our first-born child. Our 18-month-old daughter Erin had died suddenly just a few months earlier on July 18, 1990.
We had done the unthinkable. Together we walked into the funeral home’s showroom and picked out a casket for our little girl. Not a new bed. Not a new bike. Like other mommies and daddies got to do. We bought a casket. And together we picked out an outfit. The outfit “she’d wear”… well, forever. And we purchased a plot. In the children’s section of a cemetery. And designed a marble marker. “I carry your heart,” it reads, that was placed above her body. In the cemetery.
Twenty years ago, when grief was so new, and fresh, and unsettling, and confusing, that first Halloween made me angry. How dare they decorate with gravestones? How dare they build fake cemeteries with blood-stained hands and arms and legs reaching up from the earth. It all felt cruel and inhumane and specifically directed at my wife and I that year.
MY CHANGING RELATIONSHIP WITH LIFE
But as the months passed, and turned into years, and as I set the intention to heal all that needed to be healed…my relationship with the Halloween cemetery changed. As did my relationships with so many other parts of my life.
Innocent and ignorant. And I mean that in the nicest way. I realized and understood that the Halloween cemetery builders were not trying to hurt me. They weren’t trying to cause me more pain. In truth, that weren’t even really thinking of people like me. People learning to live with the death of our children. As I drive past now, twenty years later, I simply shake my head and smile …a little.
If you’d like to explore this further, or any other facet of your grief journey, I work with people as a coach one-on-one. If you’re in the Rockford, IL area, we can do that in person. If you’re out of the local area, we can Skype or Facetime. If you'd like to work with me, please email me at tomzuba@aol.com and we can discuss deatails.
Thanks for putting my feelings into words.i can handle pumpkins, but not graveyards or zombies. My mom passed over in January 2014.
Thanks for putting my feelings into words.i can handle pumpkins, but not graveyards or zombies. My mom passed over in January 2014.
Halloween has always been a favorite in our family. When a young man in our neighborhood was murdered 10 years ago, I began to see the skeletons, ghosts and tombstones differently. Now that my son has passed away, that feeling is stronger. I am happy to observe Halloween with witches, spiders, and monsters.
" It all felt cruel and inhumane and specifically directed at my wife and I that year." Absolutely how I experienced Halloween graveyards the year my son Seth died. I’m still not crazy about them (4 years later), but I’m not angry at the people who put them up. I might add “blissfully” to “innocent and ignorant” to describe them. Pretty sure none of them have lost a child; of course, we’re all so different: what is offensive to some may be therapeutic to others. Great post, Tom, thanks.
U must live in a good, upscale and old fashioned neighborhood, Tom. Where I live (Grand Rapids, MI), I noticed very few houses decorate for Halloween or Fall anymore. And the houses that do decorate have very little decorations. Seems like every year more and more families are not celebrating Halloween as well as other Holidays, because of the recession we’re in. Also, I think most folks are losing their Holiday spirits due to overworking and technology making us dumb down and lazy.
Anyway,thanks for the Halloween/loved ones lost Article. <3
Love & light, Barb.